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Forum:Giving due credit for boat skins - an expedient solution
A small problem of logistics that I am running into with boat skins is this. * It is common to have multiple skins packaged into one bundle and installed by an auto-installer. * Sometimes those bundles are much greater than 10MB in size. ** By contrast over 95% of the custom skins that I've seen have a ZIP file tha tis <10MB in size. * In just about every case the author(s) of the skins are credited at the URL where the bundle is downloaded from and sometimes those names appear again during installation however, * once installed there is no easy way to associate a skin to an author or group of authors. Some lucky people blessed with a photographic memory may be able to do this but even such a savant would need to be patient enough to install one pack/bundle/collection at a time then make the association, keep notes and refer to those note when uploading each skin individually to the wiki. ;Best solution: Savvy author's will have used the Icon.dds file to feature their name(s) or brand and I highly recommend that all creators of custom skins make a practice of doing so. The problem described above is a real obstacle to populating the with skins because it is not always possible to give due credit/attribution to teh author(s) at the time of uploading a skin. This wiki requires that each skin have it's own page - not one page for each bundle of skins. FYI, the virtues of this approach include: # Each skin get's to be show cased. # Each skin get's to be discussed via the Discussion tab at it's dedicated page. # Each page/skin has a popularity measure that is based on the number of members who have chosen to add that page to their list of favorites. This should be valuable feedback to the author(s). # Author(s) names (eventually) get featured with each skin (whereas currently this is not done unless the author features their name(s) in the icon file). # It is feasible to construct a semantic query that returns the names of all authors who have work that score a popularity measure of, say 50% or higher. ;Expedient solution: The solution I am recommending is to :# enter unknown in the credits input box when uploading a skin for which you honestly don't know the author. :# leave the "Download URL" input box empty if you honestly cannot recall it. :# Do specify the CC-BY-SA license (even though you are not yet able to attribute the work to an author. :# Invite author(s) or members who recognize the work to edit the page using the form based UI to insert the correct list of authors. This expedient solution should work well because * the input box for Credits is designed to auto-complete based on previously entered values for that property. So the chances of multiple spellings of the same name are diminished. * it is easy enough to construct a query that identifies all pages with unknown specified for this attribution field. So if a page goes for say 3 months without having this field properly filled in then appropriate action can be taken by a small task-force to research the name(s) and populate the form or as a last resort remove the non-attributed creative work from the wiki. ;Author's - please do not take offense! :So long as authors understand that this is not meant to be disrespectful then I don't think their will be any ill-will generated form this somewhat "backwards" approach to attribution. I suggest that the license selected at the time of upload be CC-BY-SA. If an author prefers a more restrictive license then it is not difficult for them to edit the page for the uploaded ZIP file and change the license template to one of the other Creative Commons licenses .. or add their own. If you can detail a better way of handling this problem then please use this thread to describe your proposal. --najevi 06:19, 14 August 2009 (UTC)